


The Life You Need

by mydeira



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydeira/pseuds/mydeira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete Tyler reflects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Life You Need

Pete Tyler watched his son with complete fascination as the boy slept. He had given up on having a family years ago. Hell, he’d given up on having a marriage right around his and Jackie’s tenth anniversary. The only reason they hadn’t gone their separate ways was that he couldn’t imagine life without her. Jackie had stayed because life was much better with him. Even when he knew it was hopeless, he had never stopped loving her.

Then came the Cybermen and the Doctor, and Pete had to find a new way to live in a new world. Jackie was gone; so was his job and most of his friends. He had fallen in with Jake and Mickey by default and set about rebuilding their world, picking up other survivors along the way.

Three years later when he met the Doctor again, Pete Tyler had risen to a position wherein he was only answerable to the President, but that was more out of courtesy than any actual chain of command. He would have traded it for a quiet life in the country in a heartbeat. This wasn’t what he’d wanted for himself. But you weren’t always afforded the luxury of living the life you wanted.

Sometimes, though, you were.

In the midst of more fighting and death, he had found Jackie again. Not his Jackie, but what his Jackie would have been if things had gone differently. The same as he was her Pete that wasn’t. They had both been in love with the ghosts not of who they had lost but who they had never really had. Eventually, though, they had gotten past the ghosts and found each other. Things could have turned out much worse.

“He’s got your hair,” a quiet voice interrupted his musings.

Pete turned to see Rose standing uncertainly behind him. Rose who could have been his daughter if things had gone differently. He understood where she had been coming from the first time they met. At the time, it was too much to take it in. And it terrified him just how natural it felt to think of her as his daughter. But now, after all he had seen and been through, getting a second chance with Jackie, he got it.

“Poor lad. Let’s hope that’s all he got from me,” he said lightly.

She smiled a bit wistfully. “Oh, I don’t know, if he gets Mum’s mouth on him, you’ll be thinking differently.”

“Good point.”

They lapsed into silence as she came the rest of the way into the room, joining him by the crib to peer down at her brother. She reached down and ran her fingers lightly over his feather soft hair, a look that was almost contentment on her face.

Rose wasn’t happy here. Even a blind man could see that. It didn’t help matters that he was to blame for it. The man who looked like her father but wasn’t, tearing her from the life she had chosen. He had no right stepping through the void to save her. But he’d had to try. And not just because Jackie would never have forgiven him. He’d gone for the part of him that recognized her as his daughter, a flare of paternal instinct he had no right to feel.

She wasn’t happy here, but she didn’t hate him. And after the road trip to Norway, she had thrown herself into work at the Institute with a determination that left him in awe. This wasn’t the life or the world she wanted, but she was going to make the most of it. It made him sad and proud at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly.

“Don’t be,” she replied, still looking at her brother. “It was the right thing to do. Besides,” Rose stood up and faced Pete, her eyes dancing, “this little guy needs his big sister to get him into trouble.”

“I don’t think he needs much help there. Trouble is in the Tyler blood.”

“Yeah, it is. And somehow we manage quite well in spite of it, don’t we?”

“We do at that.”

Life rarely gave you wanted you wanted, but sometimes it gave you exactly what you needed.


End file.
